He is the 47th horse to die this year as a result of racing in Britain, but he may be remembered less for his untimely death and more for serving justice in the macabre world of British horseracing.
Saturday 5th April
Celebre d’Allen was handsome. He had elegance and stature, a perfectly symmetrical face with mountain-peak like ears, kind eyes, and a soft, rounded mouth. When he moved, seas of silky brown washed over him, as if the hand of God was painting him afresh with every step. Celebre d’Allen was also keen to please – compliance had been whipped into him since an early age.
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On Saturday April 5th Celebre d’Allen made the journey from his stables in Somerset to Aintree, Liverpool to participate in the 2025 Aintree Grand National. The race is notorious and by 2024 was responsible for 88 horse deaths. More worrying the rate of fatalities was increasing. According to trade body, the British Horseracing Authority, a modern steeplechase race, which includes the Grand National, has an average of four deaths for every 1,000 horses. Between 2000 and 2010, the Aintree event recorded a rate of four times that with 16 deaths per 1,000 horses, and in the period 2018 to 2023, it rose to six times the average, with a shocking 25 deaths per 1,000 horses.
Someone else making their way to Aintree was 35-year-old Micheal (pronounced MEE-hawl) Nolan, a native of Rathanna, in County Carlow, Ireland. Nolan grew up in a horseracing community and relocated to England in November 2010, joining trainer Philip Hobbs. Nolan was to ride Celebre d’Allen at 4pm that Saturday. The course was gruelling, consisting of 34 horses racing four and a quarter miles and jumping over 30 fences – all very unnatural for horses. At 13 years old, Celebre d’Allen would be the most senior runner on the course. In fact, the last time a 13-year-old won the Aintree Grand National was in 1923, a staggering 102 years earlier.
Celebre d’Allen would never finish the race. He cleared the 29th jump before ‘fading’ or losing pace. Nolan was undeterred and forced Celebre d’Allen to clear the 30th fence after which the horse collapsed, unable to finish the race.
Celebre d’Allen was transferred to a nearby stud farm, where he spent the night, and the following day was paraded in front of the media. Trainer Hobbs boasted the horse was ‘bright and breezy after running so well in the Grand National.’ Hobbs appeared to be in denial. Celebre d’Allen was moved back to Somerset and during the morning of Tuesday 8th April died of a severe bacterial respiratory infection he had reportedly picked up after the race.
Nolan received a ten-day ban after Aintree stewards ruled, he had ‘continued in the race when the horse appeared to have no more to give and was clearly losing ground after the second-last fence.’
No action was taken against Hobbs.
At the time of writing there is no public footage of Celebre d’Allen’s collapse.
Whipped to Submission
It takes about 21 hours to fly the 10,500 miles from Aintree to Sydney, Australia. Once there you can meet Professor Paul McGreevy from the University of Sydney. McGreevy is a heavyweight in animal welfare, with over 250 peer-reviewed scientific publications and seven books to his name. In 2020, McGreevy published two papers that concluded an extensive ten-year research programme into the practice of horse-whipping.
Part of the research included comparing skin samples from humans and horses, to identify differences between skin structure and nerve supply. The result – there were no significant differences in the concentration of nerve endings in the outer skin layer.
McGreevy expanded: “This was not surprising, as horses, like humans, need robust yet sensitive skin to respond to touch, say, from flying insects or other horses. From this, we can deduce that horses are likely to feel as much pain as humans when being whipped.”
McGreevy continued: “Repeated strikes of the whip on horses that are fatigued as they end a race are likely to be distressing and cause suffering. A horse’s loss of agency as it undergoes this kind of repeated treatment is thought to lead to learned helplessness.”
I thought of Celebre d’Allen at the 30th fence, his final jump, a jump he was forced to make. He had been bullied and coerced his whole life and would have been whipped roughly once every minute by Nolan for the duration of the race that fateful Saturday. (Perversely, jockeys are legally permitted to whip a horse, with the limit set at seven thrashes during a jump race. The force administered in the thrashing however is left to the vagaries of language with guidelines merely suggesting ‘excessive’ force should be avoided). Scared and frightened, Celebre d’Allen submitted himself to Nolan one last time, and in doing so pushed his body to breaking point. After listening to McGreevy, I better understood Celebre d’Allen’s behaviour. What remained inexplicable was why Nolan had such disregard for Celebre d’Allen’s wellbeing. After all, Nolan had over a decade’s experience and promoted himself as a seasoned jockey. It is reasonable to assume he would have sensed the physiological and psychological breakdown Celebre d’Allen was suffering, and yet he continued to ride him to a state of collapse. The abuser-abused relationship was laid bare for all to see.
At the Point of Exhaustion
The horseracing fraternity are prone to using hollowed-out language. Numbed to emotional meaning it is ambiguous at best, misleading at worst.
I wanted to better understand what the Aintree stewards meant when they spoke about Celebre d’Allen having ‘no more to give.’ Was that just tiredness, or something more ominous?
Dene Stansall is an author, campaigner, and horse welfare consultant for Animal Aid. He has addressed MP’s and Peers in Westminster and spoken to local authorities and councils. Dene’s journey to campaigning against horseracing is unusual – Dene was once a passionate racing fan himself.
“I was a regular racegoer. One particular day, I was enlightened to the reality of racehorses’ lives – and deaths. I saw two young mares – Fizgig and Queens View – killed in the most horrific of circumstances. The racing officials said nothing and nothing was reported in the racing papers about either horse,” said Dene.
The experience put Dene on a different life path, and now we are speaking about what happened to Celebre d’Allen.
“At about the 28th fence, Celebre d’Allen was up there in contention. And then he dropped away like a stone through water. He just dropped back through the field of runners. Nolan continued to jump d’Allen when he should have pulled the horse up once he started showing signs of distress. Eventually d’Allen was almost at a walking pace, and that’s when he collapsed.”
I ask Dene what Celebre d’Allen would have been feeling.
“Incredible stress and anxiety. At this point his heart is beating incredibly fast, there would be muscle spasms, a large build-up of lactic acid, and cognitive impairment. He would be in immense discomfort. Pain.”
Breaking Down the Immune System
Dene tells me it wouldn’t have ended there.
“Celebre d’Allen would have been incredibly stressed and his immune system would be breaking down. At a certain point he would be highly prone to picking up a disease, with the lungs or respiratory system being the most obvious targets. It could be said Nolan rode d’Allen to a point of exhaustion, breaking down his immune system and exposing him to future infections.”
A 2022 paper titled ‘Immune Functions Alterations Due to Racing Stress in Thoroughbred Horses’ expands on Dene’s point: ‘Racehorses are under constant stress when training and during competitions. It is known that high levels of cortisol, the hormone responsible for stress regulation, can impact the immune system. The paper recommended ‘veterinarians responsible for racehorses perform a more rigorous clinical follow-up of the animals in the days following races.’
Celebre d’Allen was killed on the racecourse that fateful Saturday afternoon – it was just a matter of time before he would pick-up an infection and die from it.
Legal Action
On April 14th Animal Aid confirmed they were considering bringing a private prosecution against Micheal Nolan for riding Celebre d’Allen to the point of exhaustion and collapse.
The Animal Welfare Act (AWA) 2006 was introduced to provide a basic level of rights and protection for animals in the UK. It has generated a mixed response, with some claiming it under-represents certain animals (i.e. those held captive for research purposes) while others claim it is under enforced even for those animals included in its scope.
With regard to Celebre d’Allen, a possible prosecution could be brought under Section 9 of the AWA, which placed a legal obligation on Nolan to protect the horse ‘from pain, suffering, injury and disease.’ Previous acts of blatant neglect and even direct violence have gone unpunished. In 2017, jockey Davy Russell received only a caution for punching his horse before a race, while other offences including a jockey who headbutted his horse and another who punched his horse in the neck resulted in one-day and four-day suspensions respectively. Any legal action that brings true accountability to the self-regulating racing industry is long overdue.
Iain Green, Animal Aid Director, said: “A thirteen-year-old horse was pushed so far beyond his limits in the name of ‘sport’ that his exhausted body collapsed. This is sheer, incontrovertible animal cruelty – and those responsible for Celebre d’Allen’s suffering must be held accountable. To believe that a ten-day suspension is just punishment for leading a horse to collapse is simple absurdity.”
Green went on to explain that while the post-mortem claimed Celebre d’Allen’s death was the result of a respiratory infection away from the racecourse, Animal Aid would be seeking expert opinion to properly determine whether Celebre d’Allen’s vulnerability to the life-threatening infection was because of his collapse on the racecourse. In addition, they would look to establish the likelihood of such a vulnerability being known by Nolan. Green and the team at Animal Aid are being forced to play detective on Celebre d’Allen’s behalf, with the Aintree stewards ruling on Nolan, and his subsequent ban, providing them with a possible smoking gun.
If Nolan’s actions and Celebre d’Allen’s subsequent death result in a criminal prosecution it will put both the AWA and the horseracing industry under much needed scrutiny. Thought to be the first prosecution of its kind, it will not only deliver justice for Celebre d’Allen but also expose the cruel realities of what has for too long been passed off as an acceptable national tradition.
British horseracing is an ugly contortion of strange bedfellows: greedy gamblers and wily bookies, self-proclaimed trainers and fantasist owners, frenzied racegoers and sadistic jockeys who inflict pain at will. And somehow, caught up in this very British and very violent nightmare, are the horses.
In the 14 days since Celebre d’Allen’s death, a further nine horses have died on British racetracks. Three died on a single day (April 12th). The youngest horse to die was three-year-old Falconer. None were natural deaths. All would have been painful.
If the voices advocating for Celebre d’Allen get their day in court perhaps it won’t only be Nolan who will be retired from racing. Perhaps it will trigger a much-needed conversation on how we all cure ourselves of a national illness that allows an animal to be ridden to its death.
— ©2025 Sul Nowroz – Real Media staff writer – Insta: @theafghanwriter
